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Press, 14 September 1976, Page 16

Women members of the National Party will not become a pressure group witTiin the party while under the leadership of their new vicepresident, Mrs -Julie Cameron. She believes that would be irresponsible.

“As we are involved in all the concerns of the party, so we are involved in the whole society. We cannot consider what is good for one section in isolation from the rest,” she said in Christchurch yesterday.

Mrs Cameron was elected women’s vice-president at the party conference in July, to succeed Mrs Helen Sinclair. She sees no possibility of conflict between women activists and the rest of the party.

“It’s a broad-spectrum membership,” she said. “The women come from all walks iof life, as do the men. I i can’t think of any area in which there could be a conflict of interest between the men and the women. This is a team effort, we are all in together.”

The women’s conference held recently, which agreed that legislation on abortion should wait until the Royal Commission reported, had simply come to a conclusion which many men shared. She sees her job as iencouraging women to take a more active role in politics, and the party. Although she believes the time will I come when the women’ssec-

tions will be fully in tegrated, she considers the. are helpful to women now In her view they provide ; place and convenient meet ing time for women to lear administrative and speakin I skills. But she does want t foster the present trend f< more women to move int> the electoral branches.

Four years ago Julie Cam eron founded the Homemak ers’ Union. But her interest in political action began dur ing her years as a student activist at Victoria University. A woman who believes people should develop as individuals rather than follow sex-stereotyped roles, she shares child-rearing and home making with her busband, Norman, a Heretaunga farmer.

“He pushed me into politics,” she said, talking of her rapid rise in the party in the last two years and a half. At 29, she thought she should wait until she was a little older. But he said the time was right, so she stood for the National Party’s Heretaunga candidacy in the last election. She was nominated, and reduced the majority of the sitting member, the Labour Minister of Electricity (Mr Bailey), from 2964 to 336. “In a way,” she said, “I felt we had won because we reduced the majority so much, and it was a bigger swing than in the rest of the Wellington area.” Throughout her selection and candidacy, Julie Cameron says she had all the support, help, and encouragement she could have wished for from men within the party. She has complete faith in their ability to judge women as individuals, and to value their experience as homemakers and parents. “The party is certainly i looking for women in all)